I currently have nmis 4 running on a vm machine and I have downloaded and set up a new 8.5 appliance. Can I migrate the current settings, data etc... to the new nmis vm appliance? I would like to keep historical data and at the very least, my current groups and nodes.

John,
You basically follow the same process as described in "How do I upgrade from NMIS 4.x to NMIS 8.x?" but first you copy data from your NMIS4 server to your NEW VM.
You can do this with a command like:
cd ~
scp -r /usr/local/nmis4 root@NEWVM:/usr/local/
The you should be able to follow the rest of the process.
Keith